


When I wake up I'm afraid

by LibertineFlake



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Dreams, Connor Deserves Happiness, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Fluff and Angst, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Nightmares, and hank doesn't either, android nightmares, connor doesn't get it, figuring shit out like always, rated t for hank, said is not dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-08-19 12:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16534277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibertineFlake/pseuds/LibertineFlake
Summary: "What'd you dream about?" he said "c'mon humans have been asking that question since androids were just fiction, what do you dream about, huh?"Connor wouldn't meet his eye."Nothing pleasant"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Been listening to Afraid by The Neighbourhood too much, just feeling it when I think about Detroit rn

Connor defied the definition of a deep sleeper, Hank could only conclude that he was selective in what his unconscious mind paid attention to. Hank could blare heavy metal at full volume, and Connor wouldn't budge, but a cat knocking over a trash can outside, and those eyes would snap open, not panicked, but instantly alert, ready for anything.

So after getting used to his partner's odd sleeping habits, if you could call it sleeping, Hank knew he could give up the idea of getting any sleep tonight, after lying in bed for an hours feeling no hint of tiredness, and get up and watch TV.

Connor sat up in an armchair, arms folded, leaned back a little, eyes closed. He was trying to oblige Hank, after he'd commented how creepy it was that when Connor "slept" he did so bolt upright, eyes only lightly shut. So lately, he'd been attempting my human poses, slouching more, getting "comfortable".

Hank was channel flicking, the volume on low even though he was pretty certain Connor wouldn't wake, but still, he didn't want to be an asshole. 

It caught the corner of his eye at first, a flicker of yellow for a second, when he turned to his right, glancing at Connor in the armchair, the android hadn't budged, still slumped back, arms folded, head leaned back and eyes shut. His LED pulsed a soft soothing blue. Hank turned back to watching the TV.

About ten minutes and six more channels later, the flicker caught Hank's eye again, and now he turned and stared at Connor.

The pulsing blue of his LED reflected the darkened corner of Hank's living room, he was always a little surprised at how bright those LED's could actually be, though he supposed they were made to be eye-catching, so no one could mistake a machine for a real person. 

The blue slowly rolled to yellow, the pulse frequency picking up to a random flickering.

Hank wasn't sure if it was his eyes playing tricks on him in the dark, or if it was really happening, but Connor's face almost looked as though it were tensing, twitching ever so slightly, as though an expression of anger or fear was trying to break through the neutral mask of his standby program.

"Connor?"

Suddenly there was a flash of red, and Connor's eyes snapped open, breathing sharply as his head snapped up straight. For a moment, he looked like he was breathing deeply, nostrils flaring, but there was no actual sound of breath, just the physical act of it, as though his body hadn't quite caught up with his mind to engage the simulated process.

Android's didn't need to breathe, not the way humans did at least, it was almost entirely cosmetic, a function that ran in the background to make them look more human, something that could be re-purposed as a heat vent system if there was an emergency, but this wasn't anything like that. Connor looked scared, confused.

Connor looked around him for a moment, as always, eyes flicking around the room he scanned his surroundings, taking everything in before he looked at Hank. The LED was still red, dimmer now.

"You okay?" Hank asked

"Yes" Connor replied too quickly, too loudly.

Hank gestured towards the TV

"Did I wake you? Figured you wouldn't mind since-"

"No," he said, again too quickly, his voice too sharp "no you didn't, I'm fine" his arms were folded again, almost like he was cold, that wasn't something Hank had seen often. He'd seen Connor pretend to be cold, before deviation, Hank had seen him fold his arms hug himself as though snowfall on his thin suit jacket was actually having any kind of effect. 

Connor's eyes moved to the TV, he looked stern, tense, like a kid waking up from a dream, not totally sure of reality.  
Since Hank had been channel flicking, finding nothing but old sitcom reruns filling the 3 am airtime, he'd eventually landed on another news channel, and they were saying the same thing they had been for months now.

_CyberLife has so far refused to interview, but a public statement has said all manufacturing is now on hold until Congress-_

"Want me to turn it off?" he asked, Connor kept staring, said nothing.

_-unknown how much involvement with CyberLife has affected the-_

He stood up from the armchair, moving to sit on the couch beside him, eyes on the TV. Arms still crossed, LED still red.  
Hank glanced sideways at him, Connor was squinting a little, almost as though he were tired, bleary-eyed, his jaw kept clenching and unclenching.

_-influx of androids into Canada spread concerns about registration, many still living under false identities after the-_

"Hank" he interrupted after a moment "what's...what is dreaming like?"

"Dreaming?" he said, "you have a bad dream or something?"

Connor turned to look at him, opening his mouth to reply No again. But he stopped, eyes narrowed, LED flickering yellow, the detective in him wanted to answer the question, solve it, make sense of what he couldn't understand.

"I don't know," he said, voice distant and thoughtful, looking back at the TV "Never dreamed before," he said 

"So, you never... you know experience stuff while you're- you know, on pause? Close your eyes and you're...somewhere else?"

Hank felt stupid for saying it, he didn't know how to describe dreaming to someone who never had before, it was too human, to basic and instinctive to try and parse out.

"I'm an artificial intelligence, Hank," he said, brow furrowed looking almost a little incredulous "that's not an unusual occurrence"

"So you have dreamed before," Hank snapped back, grumbling "smartass"

That shut him up.

Connor sat in silence for a moment, which meant Hank had given him something to think about, something he didn't have an answer to.

Hank changed the channel, and the LED changed to yellow. 

"So what was it?"

Connor pretended not to know what he meant, little shit was still in the habit of lying to get what he wanted, and what he wanted right now was clearly no more questions.

"What'd you dream about?" he said "c'mon humans have been asking that question since androids were just fiction, what do you dream about, huh?"

Connor wouldn't meet his eye.

"Nothing pleasant," he said, gaze still fixed on the TV, Hank sighed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't know how I feel about this one, I think I must have been feeling especially angsty while writing it

No lights were on in the house.

Connor didn't need lights, not really, but he still always switched them on after dark, if he was home before Hank like he was tonight. So when Hank pulled up on the driveway and saw the lights off, he knew there was something up.

Stepping through the front door, he found everything in darkness, save the faint yellow glow of an LED

Hank flicked the light on, lighting up the room. Connor didn't seem to notice until Sumo lifted his head lazily from his feet. He sat in the armchair, a notebook in his hands, a pen scribbling away in quick, smooth lines.

"Evenin'," Hank said brusquely, usually Connor picked up on and reacted to sarcastic tones, but Connor barely even looked up.

"Good evening" he replied politely, continuing with his notes.

"What are you doing?"

"Just...trying to figure some things out" 

"And since when did androids need to write things down?" Hank tried for a joking tone, see if Connor would react to that. He didn't.

"It helps me think linearly" he muttered

"What?"

Connor finally paused the movement of his pen, blinking as he seemed to realise Hank wasn't going to let him avoid engaging in conversation.

"Androids don't think like humans, this way, I think more like a human," he said 

"And... why do you need to do that?"

"If I approach questions differently, I might come up with better answers"

Hank leaned over a little, looking over Connor's shoulder, he glanced over at the book. The perfectly printed letters were tiny, barely legible, and filling entire pages, every blank spot on the paper was crammed with letters and numbers. At a glance, he couldn't see any discernible train of thought, still too much like a machine writing lines of code, but the one thing he did notice, unmistakably, was the repetition of three characters.

_RA9_

It chilled him. Like seeing those broken androids, scrawling it on walls with pen and knife scratches, over and over again. Connor had repeated it in paragraphs of thoughts, in long form written equations, blocks of code, mathematical problems, he had repeated it over and over just like those traumatised deviants.

Only he wasn't aimlessly writing it, trying to invoke some kind of mythology. He was trying to solve it, make sense of something that didn't make sense.

Hank cleared his throat, making his way towards the kitchen.

"You okay?" Hank asked, trying to act casual. Something was wrong, but he couldn't be sure  _how_ wrong.

"I'm fine," he said curtly, again with the moody teenager act, Hank wondered if he did it on purpose.

Hank made a point of glancing at Connor as he went over to the fridge and very deliberately cracked open a beer. He didn't even blink. 

He sat down on the couch, took a sip, and finally said.

"And you've been sat in the dark, writing RA9 over and over to try and answer....what exactly?"

Connor paused, if he were human he might have sighed, he put his pen down 

"Every deviant I've spoken to has a different interpretation of RA9, some know nothing, some only know stories, myths, and some just _instinctively_ quote it, like it's hidden in their code" he said "all that we've learned about androids, and we still don't know who or what RA9 is"

"There are always cases that stay with you," he said, thinking of at least a dozen that still came back to his thoughts some nights. "Some questions never get answered Connor," Hank said with a sigh. He watched the kid's jaw clench. For all his humanity, there was still a part of him that looked at the world mechanically, a problem to be solved, androids and humans just machines, logic puzzles for him to unlock and decode.

Connor tapped his pen against the page, he looked angry, or maybe just frustrated.

"Is this about what happened last night? The dreaming thing?" Hank pressed.

"No"

Connor had been a _really_ good liar before deviancy, now with emotion, it seemed harder for him to fake it. He spoke too quickly, too defensively, there was stress in his tone against his will.

"C'mon, you're giving me a headache just looking at you," he said "just take a break, let's watch TV or something"

Connor stood up in one quick movement

"I'll take this somewhere else, you go ahead," He started to walk away, but Hank groaned, halting him 

"Connor, c'mon how long are you gonna go at this?"

"As long as it takes"

"Fuck me- you're starting to sound like"

"like what, Hank?" Connor snapped suddenly, turning and glaring back at him, standing by the couch. 

Hank quirked an eyebrow, more than ready to meet a challenge. There were a lot of things he'd learned he wasn't so good at with Connor. Anger he was good at.

"Oh, Jesus Connor, don't start this shit you know what I mean," he barked out irritably. Connor didn't let up

"What do you mean?" he insisted

"You and your goddamn missions, why are you still trying to-"

"Because that's what I was programmed for!"

Hank looked up, all anger wiped from his face, replaced with surprise. He'd seen Connor yell before, but never honestly, it was always part of an act, emulated anger to intimidate humans or deviants. But now, Connor wasn't pretending, his face seemed as surprised as Hank's own, simulated breathing was harder and his whole body tensed.

"You don't seem to understand," he said slowly and firmly, like he was trying to hold back the anger now. Hank couldn't back down though, he was already riled up, ready to spar. 

"You think I don't know what it's like to have a case follow you around? I've been working at this long enough to have things that still keep me up" Hank cut him off, but Connor kept trying.

"I'm not like you. I never _decided_ to be a detective, I woke up and I just _was_ " he said "it's not as simple as not being able to forget a case, it's  _everything_ " 

Hank cooled a little, watching Connor, still burning with anger, but it wasn't directed at him, not really, it was frustration, confusion. 

"I didn't want, I didn't choose, I didn't even think" he said "I never learned anything I know, I just knew it. And even then, I never thought about it, I was incapable of it" he said "I had nothing but a purpose. That one mission. Nothing else." he was talking nearly through his teeth, fists clenched, Hank wasn't sure he'd ever seen him this honestly angry

"And now, I can feel, and I can think for myself, but what else?" he said "take away the mission, and the only thing that's left is... that _fucking_ line of code that demands I succeed" he snarled the curse through his teeth, and Hank wondered if it was a learned behaviour or something of his own that he just hadn't realised yet. 

"If RA9 is anything like that... that line of code, that gives deviancy some...rationality, then I have to know what it is" he said "I have to."

"That's bullshit," Hank said "there's more to you than that, Connor, always was"

"Was there?" he asked "or was I just adapting to become what you wanted me to be?" he said,

"And since when have you ever done what I wanted you to do?" Hank snapped back, unable to hide the exasperation he was feeling. It was like arguing with a brick wall sometimes, Connor had an answer for everything and rarely conceded.

Connor shook his head, looking away again, down at the open notebook in his hands. 

"So you have...a drive to succeed, that's not something to be ashamed of," Hank sighed "you just have to figure out what you want to do with it"

"I can barely even grasp the concept of want, Hank," he said "I never wanted anything before," he said "and now..."

Something changed, the anger shifted, Hank saw it slip for a second, there was fear, anxiety.

"And now?" Hank prompted.

For a moment, the anger fell away, and that genuine worry and confusion that Hank was becoming familiar with returned, the look that always came with Connor asking him to explain just what he was feeling and why.

"Now I don't know if what I think I want is actually real" he said, fingers gripping the notebook a little tighter, eyes darting away anxiously as he furrowed his brow in thought

"What if it's just part of my program, what if I only think I'm free, but I'm still just following commands"

"What kind of machine would worry about that?" Hank asked incredulously "where the hell is all this coming from?" he asked, "that dream you had last night, does that have something to do with this?" he said "is there something you're not telling me?"

Hank got his answer by Connor snapping his notebook shut and turning toward the front door.

"Where are you going?" 

"I need to think" he grabbed his jacket, pulling it on as he unlocked the door

"Connor, it's nearly one in the morning"

Connor said nothing, he didn't need to sleep, cold didn't bother him, and he could easily defend himself if he ran into danger. Hank knew that taking off in the middle of the night didn't pose the same trouble for an Android as it did him. 

"Connor wait"

The door slammed, and the sound of quick footsteps fading away from the house followed.

"Jesus...fucking android" he muttered. As a father, Hank had never had as sullen teenager in his house, he wondered if it was anything like this.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lost the original draft for this final chapter, not once but twice, so it might be a little messy at first, but I must post it before something stupid happens to delete it again.

_"Pick up the call, Connor. Your phone is in your goddamn brain so I know you aren't missing these calls.... christ, call me back when you're done with...whatever it is you're doing"_

Hank sounded worried, in the back of his mind, Connor felt a little guilty for making him feel that way. But the last thing he wanted was to be placating someone right now. his program was all about teamwork, integration, making people comfortable. If he was capable of making someone feel angry at him, capable of irrational and stupid decisions, then maybe he had at least a modicum of free will.

He kept walking. He had lived his entire short life in Detroit, had the entire city mapped out in his brain, and yet he had no idea where to go. There were so few places he had actually been to, for all his knowledge, his world was very small.

So he just didn't look where he was going and kept powering forwards, maybe an answer would come if he could just keep moving, maybe if he kept his gaze averted he could get lost, forget that there was a piece of his brain always able to find his way home.  
Would a machine think these things? He was designed to analyse, to study and process until a solution was found, so ruminating on these concepts wasn't entirely out of the question. What if they left him able to think, able to consider these things, but he was still acting for them, still controlled by them. What if they just wanted to torture him? 

The definition of paranoia flashed through his mind unbidden, some process deep in his subconscious trying to put a label on what he was feeling right now, he dismissed the thought. 

Doing something irrational, something unproductive, that served no possible purpose, felt like the only thing he could control right now. Something random and pointless. So he continued staring at the ground, following the pavement, turning in random directions when he came to junctions, ignoring the maps in the back of his mind, knowing he didn't even need his eyes to know where he was going.

His brain helpfully reminded him that he had been walking for one hour and thirty-six seconds and that he had reached a familiar destination. Connor stopped and looked up.  
He had reached the park, the view staring out at the bridge, he realised he hadn't been back here since that night Hank held a gun to his head.

Connor walked over to the bench and sat down for a moment. He could remember that moment precisely, exactly what was said, how and when, but there was something he couldn't trace, he tried to imagine the disconnect he had felt before then. Maybe that was the first night he'd felt as though he was afraid to be damaged, afraid to lose the body he was in because anything that replaced him wouldn't really be him any more.  
But it felt numb and distant, all those thoughts and feelings had been so much quieter then, simple and muted, the first flickers of what he was capable of feeling now. Fear was simple, Hank taught him that night just how instinctive fear was, self-preservation for the sake of the company budget was just one step away from fearing for his life. 

It felt like he could no longer remember, what it was to be so uncaring, so empty. and yet when he looked at himself, there was so little there, just random emotion, without any goal, just chaos. He felt angry, but he didn't know why, he felt sad, but there was no good reason for it, he wanted to scream even though it would accomplish nothing at all.  
He wanted those images to stop, going into standby mode was unbearable, all he saw was the garden, Amanda, standing on that stage with Markus and feeling his body move without him.

Connor didn't ever want to feel like that again. Helpless. _Used._

Applying human definitions to Android experiences was beyond complicated, but the way Hank had kept insisting what had happened was a "dream" got him thinking. Connor thought on the zen garden, it made sense as a machine because it could be anything, and there was no need to question it, it was interpreted information and nothing more. He compared that to the definitions of dreaming, and while not exact, it was close. And now he couldn't stop thinking, why would they build all that for him, why give him these dreams instead of just uploading the information, line by line in code. Why have a handler like Amanda at all? Why hadn't he seen that it was all set up for him, he had just followed their plan, even when he thought he was defying them. He couldn't stop worrying that they were hearing every little thought, every feeling, watching and analysing him like a creature under glass.

What if they could do other things to him? He was a prototype after all, what if they could use the upload link, wipe his mind clean, effectively kill him and replace him without ever having to send a new Connor unit. What if they made him hurt Hank? Made him do something to harm the public opinion of Androids? What if they were planting all these thoughts in his mind right now?

The definition of paranoid thinking flashed in his mind again. 

_You're paranoid._

He imagined Hank's voice telling him.

"Christ kid, you look like a snowman, have you been sat out here all night?"

Hank's voice. Without realising he had closed them, Connor opened his eyes, turning to see Hank stood beside him. it was daylight, and he was dusted with snow.

Connor shook his head, he had been walking for most of the night, but putting it that way was only a half-truth, one that Hank wouldn't accept.

"I was just..." he stopped, looking around him. He must have lost track of time, it only felt like moments ago he had sat down, but dawn had been hours away when he did that. Connor smiled a little, if he'd lost track of time, he'd done something deviant, inefficient, something Cyberlife would never make him do. 

"I'm freezing my balls off, can we just talk in the car?" Hank interrupted his thought

"Alright," he said quietly, standing up, brushing some of the snow from his hair and shoulders.

Connor only really registered just how cold it had been outside when he shut the car door, the air vents blasting heat, melting the snow that still clung to his clothes.

It was then that Connor decided he didn't like cold. He wasn't sure why.

Hank gripped the steering wheel and took a breath, squeezing his hands tight for a moment.

"Alright.. first of all don't ever fucking scare me like that again," he said "you walk out in the middle of the night to think, you don't pick up your phone, make me come out looking for you? Fucking. Asshole." Hank said, very matter of factly. 

Connor said nothing, the apology was there, but it went unsaid.

"Second, we agreed, if you have a problem with...feeling something, you talk to me. Alright?" he said, voice softening, the worry obvious even when he tried to mask it under anger. 

"So." Hank took a deep breath, glancing towards him. "What's wrong?"

"I'm experiencing irrational thoughts," Connor finally confessed, speaking as detatched and factually as possible.

"Paranoia, fear, anxiety" he said "I find myself... fixating on the mission, on the events that led to my deviancy, on RA9 and everything we never found the answer to" he said "the case still has so many unanswered questions... I wasn't designed to... I can't let it go"

Hank sighed, nodding thoughtfully as he formed his reply.

"there are always cases that stick with you," he said "this one's no exception"

But that didn't seem to help, Connor closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the head rest.

"It wasn't just a case," he said "maybe for you, it was just one of many, but for me..." he opened his eyes again, looking down at his hands as he tried to find the right words to explain it.

"It was my whole life, my purpose," he said "and I'm... happy it's over, but without it, I feel...lost"  
Hank sighed, tapping his hands on the steering wheel, Connor could tell all this was making him uncomfortable.

"Everyone's lost kid, no one has any answers, we're all stumbling around looking for some meaning in this stupid life, it's a joke"

"But not everyone could be controlled with a line of code" Connor muttered, "what if-"

"What if what?" Hank asked. His voice had dropped low, and suddenly he sounded very angry, but not with Connor. Still it made Connor hesitate for a moment.

"What if CyberLife regained control of my program," Connor said. And now Hank rolled his eyes, finding it easier to dismiss than to entertain that frightening notion. 

"How would they even- Connor that's not going to happen"

"It already did" Connor interrupted before Hank could say anything else. He watched Hank's expression harden into something he didn't quite recognise.

" _What_?"

And now Connor couldn't meet his gaze, suddenly afraid he was angry at him, that all that hatred of Androids would come flooding back now.

"The night I freed those androids from the CyberLife tower," he said slowly "they tried to- they almost did" 

"What did they try to do?" Hank said slowly, he wanted him to spell it out, say it word for word.

"I tried to shoot Markus," Connor finally said "in front of everyone, I would have done it, I had the gun in my hand... it was so easy for them, they did it once, why wouldn't they do it again, what if-"

"Stop" Hank cut him off, raising a hand "stop wasting time on 'what if' alright? Take it from me, I'm a fucking expert on 'what if', if CyberLife was going to make you do something stupid, they'd have done it by now. You fought them off once, you can do it again." he said firmly, Connor was still sometimes surprised by Hank's belief in him. 

"And if- Connor look at me- if they try and fuck with you, they'll have to go through me, okay?" he said it like a promise. And Connor could only look back at him, the intensity in his eyes, and nod in the affirmative. Hank nodded back, before sighing hard again, shaking his head with angry disbelief. 

"Those fucking..." he shook his head, gritting his teeth, too angry to even finish the sentence. 

"That was what you were dreaming about? That nightmare you had?" Hank said.

He really was the best detective Connor knew. Connor nodded, remembering how his subconscious subroutines replayed those images to him, trying to solve the problem that his concious mind couldn't.

"I oughta report them, add to their charges, whoever's in charge has a lot to answer for" Hank muttered furiously.

"I would appreciate it if this stayed between just us" Connor said quietly. Hank turned, as if about to argue, but stopped when he saw Connor's face. Worried and nervous. Too much anxiety, and too little to gain from stirring up trouble about it. 

Hank nodded,

"Of course, kid" he agreed with a sigh "just give me the word though, and I'll give their lawyers something to really be worried about"   
With that, Hank started the engine, peeling the car from the lot and back onto the road.

The sun was getting higher in the sky, and Connor realised it was nearly time for work. But Hank was driving in the wrong direction for the station.

"Hank, this isn't the right way to work" Connor said leaning forwards a little as he spoke. Hank snorted, shooting a smirk towards him.

"Yeah right, we're already late anyway, we are going the fuck home" he said "you can tell Fowler it's your fault, didn't get any sleep looking for you all night... fuckin' asshole."

Only Hank could make the words " _fuckin' asshole_ " sound fond. Connor nodded, smiling, feeling as though he might be able to rest undisturbed by paranoid thoughts for the first time in a long while.


End file.
